The investigation, conducted by the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section in 2011, focused on concerns that the late construction defect lawyer Nancy Quon, one of the key targets in the long-running HOA investigation, was getting confidential information from the Nevada U.S. attorney’s office and possibly elsewhere.

Quon was alleged to have been tipped off before FBI-led raids in September 2008.

Thomas Hall, one of the Justice Department prosecutors in the HOA case, told a federal judge this week that the leak investigation delved into personal and romantic relationships of public officials who have not been charged criminally or disciplined administratively.

Hall didn’t didn’t provide details, but he has previously indicated in court documents that members of the U.S. attorney’s office were among those investigated. The office removed itself from the HOA investigation after the leak allegations surfaced in late 2010, prompting the Justice Department’s Fraud Section in Washington to step in.

Hall, who is with the Fraud Section, said that since the leak allegations weren’t substantiated, making public the names of the officials would embarrass them.

“Their personal lives were dealt with in a very serious way,” Hall said.

But attorney Maggie McLetchie, representing the Las Vegas Review-Journal, argued that the public has a right to know who the officials are and why they were investigated.

McLetchie has filed court papers seeking to dissolve protective orders signed by U.S. Magistrate Judge George Foley Jr., keeping secret the evidence in both the HOA and leak investigations. Prosecutors said 6 million pages of documents, including 10,000 pages of FBI reports, were turned over to lawyers representing nearly 40 defendants in the HOA investigation alone.

The public has a right to see that evidence in what authorities have said is the largest public corruption case in Southern Nevada, with 42 convictions, McLetchie told Foley, who has not yet issued a ruling. Read more: